Episode 19 - Psychic Perversions (Patreon)

Yes, as close as you can—just like that.

…

I know it’s interfering with the cameras. I’m not blind. But it’s important we document everything as accurately as we’re able. A solid evidence chain is crucial when it comes to academic peer review.

You’ve never had to do one before, or you’d know: scientists may seem mild-mannered on the surface, but the second you put a bunch of them in a room together, every single one of them will be out for blood. They can smell weakness.

It’s just a shame we didn’t think to bring anyone with an exo-technology background, else we’d have a shot at identifying these ruins. And more importantly, whether they’re from a known species.

That’s the sort of thing that draws media attention, and that is how the bills get paid.

…!

Really? Well, that’s a spot of good news, anyway. Bring it up as soon as you’re able. Uh… and I suppose we’ll need to bring the transportation bay back online, temporarily. See to it, won’t you?

I just hope the dip in power doesn’t cause our cameras to go on the blink again.

…?

What about him? He’s the one who lost it and started shooting up everything, precisely none of which is usable footage. What are we going to do? Claim this remote backwater of a planet is actually a hotbed for poachers?

…that might not be such a terrible idea, actually.

Anyway, bring up the transport with or without him. We’re desperately behind on supplies, and Oscar could do with a chance to cool off. Maybe once he’s realized he’s not the only one with a—

Well, never mind. Off with you.

…?!

< sigh >

Tell you what. Leave the secondary camera down there to wait for him. Once he shows up to find the transport missing, see if you can’t reestablish communications. We’re going to need a thorough examination of that ruin’s exterior anyway, and he could do with a little busy work.

If he asks, tell him the truth. He took the transport off-station on a non-scheduled and completely unsanctioned runabout, and we needed it for official business. He’ll just have to wait until we’re ready to pick him up again.

< braam braam braam >

Oh, what now? Can someone please shut that off? We’re trying to work here.

…!

Proximity alert? For what? What could possibly—?

…

You’re kidding. Already? But… but…

< sigh >

Damn it all. Fine.

Put them on screen.

*

Mike opened his mouth, paused, inhaled, worked his jaw for a moment, inhaled again, then finally went with, “Do you want me to compliment you or make fun of you?”

Naomi glared at him. “What I want is for you to show me yours.”

He blanched. “W-why?!”

“What do you mean, ‘why?’ I just asked to see your dick, and you ask me why?!”

Mike started wringing his hands awkwardly. “Uh…”

“Because my pubes just fell out, dumbass,” she barked. “And I would like to know whether that was a me thing or an us thing. What’s so hard to understand about that?”

“Uh…?!” It was less rebuttal and more facial expression: he was smiling to the point of a grimace, and his eyebrows were trying to tent their way into his hairline. She assumed that meant he was thinking about it.

Which was not a no.

Her lips formed into a thin line as she considered her options. She knew she could break him down if she really wanted to, but if she were really honest with herself, she would much prefer he resist until just before the moment he pushed her down. Followed by a thorough ravaging.

Which made his reluctance all the more irritating. She had already shown him the goods. It was only fair. What was he so afraid of? That she would sneer in disgust? Not likely. She could see that monster under there clear as day—even his short and curlies. Just not in color. And she really wanted to know whether the carpet matched the drapes.

The question, though, was whether they were still attached. Ultimately, that was what decided the issue. She had yet to prepare herself for the vision of a ten-foot tall man whipping out a giant, hairless cock, and if her knees were to buckle at the sight of it, she would never live it down.

“Fine!” she grumped, letting him off the hook. She really needed to prepare an excuse to sit down first before making these kinds of demands. “Compliment me if it’ll make you feel better.”

“Oh. Uh…” He smoothed his hands down his sides in relief. “Are you sure?”

She quirked an eyebrow. “I’m waiting.”

“Um…” He licked his lips as he struggled to come up with something appropriate—which could not have been easy.

He had to know by now how much she despised compliments. Besides being immeasurably dull, they always felt so slimy and insincere, as though people were hiding their true feelings behind a veneer of politeness. But he had not been raised to wield insults as his love language like she had.

Hence her decision to allow this. Asking Mike to be rude on purpose was a bit like training an ant to do cartwheels. Sure, he might be able to pull it off in theory, but it wasn’t exactly in his nature.

Several long seconds passed in silence. Then, like the ding of an egg-timer, he took a sharp breath to announce the result of his musings.

“You have the nicest ass I’ve ever seen.”

“Fuck off.”

Her retort was as instant as it was reflexive. There was simply no helping it. Even for Mike, that had been disappointingly moronic. Did the man not have a single creative cell in his body?

Besides, just how naïve did he think she was? The nicest ass… Ha!

“No, seriously,” he protested. “You really do. It’s… perfect.”

Oh, now it was perfect? Compared to what? What did that even mean? Had the man never heard of adjectives? Simile? Metaphor? Was it bubbly? Heart-shaped? Did he want to bounce a coin off it like a drill sergeant at bunk inspection?

Was it fat?!

She was just about to peel the guy’s ears back with every invective she could conjure, starting with the apparent lack of branches within his immediate family tree… but then she noticed the far-away look in his eye, as if he was imagining some of the things he might like to do with her ‘oh-so-perfect’ backside.

The beginnings of a smile tugged at her lips. Honestly. This guy. All he wanted was to feel her up a little. Why the subterfuge? If he had just dared to be a little more explicit with his desires, he could have easily sidestepped the entire issue.

Well. She could help with that.

“That’s nice and all, Mike, but you were supposed to be complementing my vagina.”

If he had been drinking something, she was sure he would have done a spit-take. As it was, all he managed was to strangle out, “Wh—I can’t compliment that!”

Her eyes flashed, and she folded her arms exasperatedly beneath her breasts. “And why not? That’s where the hair fell out from. You didn’t think I had a hairy ass, did you?!”

“Btha-ftha-fah!” he sputtered in protest. “That’s beside the point. I can’t—you don’t just—wha—the… It’s a vagina!”

Her head bobbed in circles, trying to follow his sputtering. She would have to remember this. He was kind of cute when he got all worked up.

“That’s been established, Mike,” she replied, the height of patience. “And I would like to be reassured that it looks alright bald! Is that too much to ask?”

“Wh—I… no.” She narrowed her eyes dangerously, and he quickly amended, “I mean, yes! Of course, it looks alright. Why wouldn’t it look alright? Don’t women normally,” he gestured uncertainly toward the genitalia in question, “groom themselves like that, anyway?”

She eyed him critically for a moment, knowing full well he was trying to distract her, but there was no way she could let him get away with that kind of ignorance. “In what universe would a full Brazilian be normal? That’s for showing off, not normal hygiene.”

He blinked… then settled his hands on his hips; the very picture of a man whose world had just been rocked. “Oh. That… explains a lot, actually.”

She quirked an eyebrow, but decided not to ask. “For your information, most of us just shave up to our panty line, then trim for length every month or so. But that’s not important right now. Either you say something inventive about my bared privates, or I do something inventive with yours!”

“Like what?”

“Try me and find out,” she stated flatly. She was bluffing, of course, but he did not need to know that.

“Well, but…” his eyes darted about as he sought some means of escape, “I don’t know how to compliment… that. You’re not supposed to even talk about it!”

“What idiotic nonsense,” she scoffed. “Who exactly do you imagine is going to judge us? The aliens?! Our ‘private’ parts exist. Mine and yours. Covered or not, they’re out in the open now for all the world to see. And unless you want to go mining for lead, there’s no way we can conceivably cover them up again.”

God damn this man. If she did not already know he was straight, she would have given up on him a long time ago. Maybe this was why her mother had always warned her away from Catholics. A bunch of sexually repressed loons, the lot of them.

She took a sharp breath to curtail her rising temper. “But fine. If you don’t know how to talk about it, just… just say the first thing that pops into your head.”

He was silent for a moment, but his hands kept fidgeting about, like he could not quite decide what he was supposed to do with them. “You won’t get upset?”

“I’m already upset,” she informed him. “You have the conversational acuity of a block of concrete. But that’s just something I’m going to have to live with. In the meantime, I will accept frank honesty.”

He glanced away momentarily before trying, “You’re really mean?”

“Only to people I like,” she replied without missing a beat.

“So…” His lip curled into a shy smile. “You like me?”

She closed her eyes tiredly. Exactly how long did a girl need to wave her naked breasts in a man’s face before he put that together? “If I hated you, I’d act like you do. Now, don’t change the subject. What is the first thing you think of when you look at my lady bits?”

His head tilted with dawning comprehension, as though finally having deduced some hidden facet of her personality. It took every ounce of restraint she had not to ferret out the nugget of truth he had supposedly uncovered, but that would just give him another avenue to weasel out of this discussion. She had to remain stoic in the face of distractions.

Finally, he announced, “I just… want to know what it feels like.”

Her heart thumped within her chest, instantly forcing blood into her cheeks with the force of a battering ram.

She could scarcely believe it. In her wildest dreams, she never thought she could actually get him to admit it—out loud—without that machine in his head making him so horny he could barely see straight, but she had done it. She had won! Victory was hers! To the victor, the spoils!

All she had to do now was seize his hand and guide it along a journey of discovery toward her aching—

With a suddenness that bordered on the perverse, a grating whine reverberated through the chamber, heralding a frigid blast of air as the third wall of their moss-lined den split open into darkness, intrigue, and the promise of adventures beyond.

Naomi whirled toward the waiting void. “Oh, you cunt rag!”

*

About that…

…?

Yes! Yes, of course, they’re still alive. Absolutely thriving, in fact. It’s just—

…?

Oh, well, let’s see…

They’ve doubled in size, gained a fair amount of physical strength, improved their modes of aquatic locomotion, developed some inconsequential natural weapons and armor… nothing truly impressive yet, you understand, but it’s only been a few days. They’re only now coming out of the initial dietary-adjustment period. But I’m sure they’ll be up to your standards within a quarter-cycle or so.

Honestly, we weren’t expecting you for at least another—

…?

Problem? No… no problem. I’d never dream of reneging on a done deal—especially with a couple of upstanding citizens such as yourselves. But I mean… well, we were in the middle of shooting a documentary, you know, and—

…?

Yes, a documentary. For the GBC? Just a little station out of the um… n-never mind. You’ve probably never heard of it.

…?!

Well, they were supposed to have been the new civilian models. We didn’t actually know they were conquest enabled until after we’d already released our subjects into the wild. Bit of a faff with our supplier, you understand.

…!

< muffled laughter >

< click >

What a pillock.

I don’t suppose anyone’s gotten in touch with Oliver yet? We have got to extract the subjects from that archeological site—especially now that our buyers have shown up. If those two thugs get wind of it, we’ll be up to our elbows in scavengers before you can blink.

…

You’re shitting me. They did? How?

..—

Never mind. Never mind. Just… figure out something. Be creative!

…!

Timothy!

…?

If you do contact Oliver, be sure to mention that we have a couple of… enterprising businessmen up here hoping to return with living samples? Or am I being too subtle?

…!

Good lad.

And as a by-the-by, might I suggest we bring our defensive systems ever-so-gently back online? Just a thought.

< click >

Ah, but where are my manners? You must be positively exhausted after such a long flight.

Tell you what. Why not pop over for a nip? I’ve got a few bottles of Y’nthorian brandy tucked away, and it’d be a shame to just leave them gathering dust…

*

“How’d you do that?” Mark breathed in wonder, peering through the now-unsealed portal, still dripping with moss and sea water, and into the darkened corridor beyond.

“Do what?” Naomi growled irritably.

“I don’t know,” he failed to explain. “You just sort of… pulsed somehow. And then the door opened.”

She turned her glare on him. “You’re telling me I did that?”

“I guess it… could have been a coincidence.”

She muttered something under her breath that sounded an awful lot like another F-bomb—which made no sense that he could see. She should have been delighted at the prospect of exploring the place.

“Come on,” he whispered, motioning with one hand as he skipped toward the doors. “Let’s look around. With technology like this, there’s no telling what we might find. Weapons. Food. Maybe even a way off this planet.”

Like every silent assassin he had ever seen on television, he peered cautiously around the lip of the entry, scanning for any hint of movement. The types of things they might find down here were not necessarily all good. There could be old, unstable science experiments, horrifying creatures, infectious flesh-eating goo dripping from the ceilings. The list went on.

Currently, the light from the entry chamber was only illuminating a small patch of hallway running perpendicular to the door, so he could not see far down one way or the other. And all his spatial awareness was telling him was that the hall was every bit as narrow as it was ridiculously tall. There were neither doorways nor turns. Just a stretch of corridor extending to the far reaches of his senses, almost like some deep-ocean version of the mines of Moria.

He narrowed his eyes as he considered his next move, suddenly having second thoughts. Without an obvious food source, he could not rely on his instincts to propel him one way or the other, and if there was anything dangerous down here, his radar was remaining frustratingly silent on the subject. Not that he would trust that any farther than he could throw it—it being embedded within his own skull and all.

But then Naomi stomped past, still muttering under her breath.

“Naomi, wai—” He made a move to stop her, but then thought better of it and ducked back behind cover. Crouching low, he hissed, “What are you doing?”

“What are you doing?” she countered. “Are we going to look around or not?”

“Yeah, but,” he cast another furtive look down the corridor, “you gotta be careful when it comes to this kind of stuff.”

She rolled her eyes. “Either A: it’s a base owned and operated by the aliens who abducted us, which means they already know we’re here. Or B: it’s just some forgotten outpost in an underwater grotto. Possibly both. The odds of finding anything alive down here are practically nil.”

“We—” he began before remembering to lower his voice. “We can’t assume any of that! Jesus, Naomi, haven’t you ever seen an Alien movie? There could be face-huggers crawling all over the place.”

She snorted. “Trust me, Mike. There’s only one thing around here that wants to hug your face.”

He shook his head rapidly, blinking in confusion. “What?”

“Whuht?” she mocked, sneering, then turned to march down the right-hand corridor. “Come on, Mr. Oblivious. Let’s go.”

He squeaked slightly before hastening after. “Wha—where are you going?”

“Does it matter? The hill outside wasn’t that big. I’m sure we’ll circle back around eventually.”

“But it’s dark!” he protested.

She paused just long enough to fix him with an incredulous expression. “So?”

“Wh—I…” He stopped to center himself again, then quickly moved to catch up. He was making excuses, and he knew it. But to be fair, there was some seriously weird shit down here. It was only normal to be a little freaked out by it. “What I mean is… this hallway doesn’t make any sense. Where’s all the turns and doors? I can’t sense any, can you? Why aren’t there any lights in here? How come that lightning stuff was only in the entry hall?”

She shrugged. “Why did it taste like rutabaga?”

The question—if it had been meant as one—momentarily derailed his train of thought. “Rutabaga? I was getting more of a spicy sweet potato.”

“Spicy is certainly a way of describing it.”

“Well, it didn’t taste like a microwaved burrito.”

“It was definitely hot enough,” she countered, then raised a finger to overrule her own objection. “Ah. But no frozen center.”

He nodded sagely. “Right.”

She chuckled before delivering a playful thump to his abdomen. “What’s your point, Kojak?”

“My point is,” he began… then blanked.

What had they been talking about? An awkward handful of seconds passed while he was left gaping like a fish before he could even remember.

“The dark?” Naomi prompted.

“Right! My point is, we couldn’t sense that door back there at all until after it opened, and it’s too dark in here to pick up any visual cues. I’m betting we’re passing all kinds of interesting stuff right now, and we don’t even know it.”

Her head bobbed once as she considered it. “And the lightning? How does that factor in?”

“Besides it being a light source? I dunno. I just think it’s weird there isn’t any more of it,” he said. Then, after a moment’s thought, he added, “Maybe that’s what passes for a control panel around here. Or maybe the control panel was one of those… funky… rotating objects we were trying to eat, and the lightning was some kind of… wiring? That makes sense, right? Wires transfer signals. Maybe that’s what that pulse you let out was: an open-the-doors signal.”

That brought her up short. “You think we ate wires? And because of that… what? We’ve evolved some kind of psychic ability to use alien technology?”

He sighed. Now that she said it out loud, it did sound kind of far-fetched. “I’m just spit-balling, Naomi. But you definitely did something to open the doors. I saw it plain as day.”

She raised a hand to stop him. “What exactly did you see? What do you mean by ‘pulse?’”

“A pulse. Like a ripple or something. But it wasn’t visual. I ‘saw’ it with my ESP-vision… or whatever we’re calling it.” There was a beat of silence. “What are we calling that, anyway?”

“Don’t change the subject, Mike,” she said before turning to walk once more… then latched onto the new topic, anyway. “What’s wrong with ESP? It stands for extrasensory perception, right? Isn’t that literally what we have?”

“I guess,” he agreed, trailing after her, “a version of it, anyway. But what’s the associated verb for that? It’s not like we’re seeing or tasting things out there.”

“You’re asking me like there’s an answer to that question,” she returned. “People don’t have this ability, Mike. Why would there be a word for it?”

“Aren’t there people who claim to have ESP? What do they call it?” he asked. “You’re the one who’s into this kind of stuff.”

“Not—it’s different stuff, Mike!” she barked—which seemed completely unreasonable to him. He was just curious. “I told you, I’m a true-crime podcast, government-conspiracy girl. Not some stupid, crystal-healing… Edgar Casey-type.”

He blinked. “Who?”

She backhanded the question away. “Never mind. The only thing you have to know is: there’re all kinds of niche sub-communities scrambling around for ‘the Truth,’ and they’re all into wildly different shit, most of whom would be horrified to be associated with any of the stupid nonsense everyone else believes. Except for the nutbags who think everything is true—you gotta watch out for them.”

“Right,” he agreed slowly, uncertain as to whether she was being self-deprecating or simply lacked the self-awareness to realize what she had just admitted to. “What was that about changing the subject?”

“Anyway,” she continued, unperturbed, “to me, it’s like we’re sensing electrostatic auras or something.”

“So… aura-sense? Electro-sense?” he ventured with half an ear.

Admittedly, he had been the one to steer them down this conversational diversion, but he was much more interested in what was going on with this ridiculous hallway. Its walls were almost perfectly smooth… keyword: almost. There were actually a few warped spots scattered at irregular intervals, but none so far had been low enough for him to properly investigate.

Naomi frowned. “Ew, no. Those sound dumb.”

“New words always sound dumb until you get used to them,” he argued.

Maybe… if he were to lift Naomi up, she could get a closer look at one? They were all pretty high, though. All he would accomplish would be to get a closer look up her—he shook his head sharply.

Bad Mark! Bad! Ignore the intrusive thoughts. You know she can’t help how she’s dressed.

Ah! But what if he threw her? Then she might be able to catch hold of the protrusion. What she could accomplish up there was another matter, but one thing at a time, right?

But then the topic they were discussing collided with his train of thought, and he almost chuckled. “Did you know ‘yeet’ means to throw something? I only found that out recently. This kid asked me to yeet him a pack of smokes one day, and for a second I was confused because I always thought it meant… like, ‘hell, yeah.’ You know? ”

She stared at him, trying and inevitably failing to reverse engineer his mental processes. “It… depends on the context. And anyway, the jury’s still out on whether that’ll end up sticking,” she pronounced with a poke to his chest. “At the very least, it’s fun to say. Aura-sense is way too clunky.”

“Okay,” he said, rubbing at the spot sourly. She needed to watch those claws of hers. “If you want something fun, why don’t we try some kind of portmanteau? People always like mashing words together.”

She quirked an eyebrow in surprise—at what, he could not say. “Such as?”

He looked her up and down uncertainly, but decided to let it pass. “Well, I don’t know. The best I could describe this ESP-thing is if you were to give visual perception a sense of touch. What do you get when you combine those two?”

Naomi thought for barely a second before delivering a decisive, “Perving.”

Mark stared at her blankly. “What?”

“Get it? Perception? Vision? Per-V. Perve. And it’s got all kinds of touchy-visual connotations built right in. I mean, we can perve through clothes, Mike,” she explained.

He narrowed his eyes. “You just like it for the joke potential.”

“I don’t not like it for that,” she agreed—then waggled her eyebrows. “I know someone who’s been perving all day.”

He bristled. In point of fact, he had been doing quite well in ignoring her state of undress, thank you very much. For the most part. “I can’t help it!”

She grinned mischievously. “I wasn’t talking about you…”

He gaped at her momentarily before making a furtive attempt at covering his junk. “Naomi!”

“You know perfectly well that doesn’t help,” she said, chiding him with a roll of her eyes. But she turned away regardless, making some pretense of scanning the surrounding corridor in a show of feigned decency. Not that anything had changed, of course. It was still just as dark and foreboding as ever. But her eyes seemed to snag on a pair of deformities just off to their right and above. “Hmm… I wonder…”

He swallowed nervously, still cupping his balls—for all the good it did. There wasn’t a thing he could do to stop her from ‘perving’ every inch of his privates. Not that the realization was anything new, but now that the thin veneer of decorum had been ripped away, he was feeling horrifically exposed. “What?”

She whirled to face him with a speculative gleam in her eye. “How big were you before our little growth spurt?”

The question ripped an involuntary snort from his nose. Where had that come from? “W-what do you mean by ‘big?’” he asked, hoping against hope she was not asking what he thought she was asking. “Like… how tall I was? How much I weighed?”

“Michael…”

The word had been intoned with every ounce of soul-destroying disappointment she could muster. He knew it well. It was one his mother used on him often. And it didn’t help that she had opted to use his full not-at-all-his name.

Then she cast a quite-deliberate glance toward his cupped hands.

He let out an indignant sputter. “That’s none of your business!”

“Oh, come on,” she said, pouting—which was when he finally put together that this had to be some sort of trap. Naomi did not pout. “I never got to perve it beforehand. Wouldn’t you like to know whether you’ve… improved?” Then, to make double-sure he was following, she added, “You know… lengthwise?”

“Naomi!” he hissed. Not that there was anyone else around to hear, but this was not a topic to be discussed with anything approaching normal inflections. “What the hell is wrong with you? Women don’t just go around talking about… that sort of thing! Especially here. We might be in danger!”

“We’ve been in danger since the moment we crash-landed,” she countered. “And you don’t know a thing about women. We absolutely talk about ‘that sort of thing.’ Just not so much around men. But I don’t have any gal-pals to chat with. So, you’ll have to do. Now, spill!”

“I can’t see what difference it makes,” he persisted, still sensing some ulterior motive lurking in the corners of this conversation. “Why do you want to know?”

“Because I’m curious,” she said evasively. “This is a bonding moment, Mike. We’re bonding.”

Like hell they were!

He glared at her for some seconds, trying to root out where she was going with this, but he honestly could not see what the actual harm might be. Other than to his ego. But then, the two of them had been all but naked ever since their shared growth spurt, so there had not been a lot left to the imagination even before this perving business had become an issue. And he had never had much ego to begin with.

Also, he was kind of curious as to what she might say once he answered. From his perspective, his package felt… proportionally the same. But he had not been afforded the opportunity to inspect himself while Naomi was around.

He rolled his shoulders back, trying to appear confident. “Seven inches,” he reported calmly.

Silence stretched while the two of them held each other’s gaze. He had lied, of course. And she clearly knew that.

“Well,” he amended, sweating, “maybe it was closer to six.”

Her stare only intensified.

“Okay, fine! It was five and a half. Happy?”

This was a stupid thing to be talking about, anyway. Besides, he had been overweight. That made a difference!

“Five and a half… whole inches?” she breathed, slinking slowly closer—to his intense consternation. The fuck was she doing now? “But you were only five and a half feet tall.”

“I was 5’10”! A-and anyway, those things have nothing to do with each other,” he reasoned shakily.

“Oh, but Michael,” she said, continuing with her sing-song lilt. “You’re so much taller now…”

Her fingers began to trace along the backs of his knuckles, still clutched protectively over his manhood—which was suddenly doing its level best to pull off a Steve McQueen impersonation off the ramp of his palms and into her wandering digits.

“You’re so much… bigger,” she cooed. “Your chest. Your arms… your cock.”

His eyes widened in terror even as his heart thundered within his chest. Whatever she was up to, he held no illusions as to his ability to withstand it. He was seconds away from blowing already!

Damn it! Not again!

“It’s got to be… eleven… maybe twelve whole inches now,” she continued, oblivious. Or perhaps not. There was no way she didn’t know exactly what she was doing. “And I—”

She bit her lip as though hesitant to say the rest. Though how she could possibly be hesitating after what she had said so far, he did not know.

But she marshaled on. “I just don’t see how I can ever be,” she glanced through her lashes to look him directly in the eye, “happy… until I feel every… single… inch. Inside me.”

He was not entirely certain what happened next. It was like the sky had opened up, and God Himself had pulled the clouds aside to shine the rays of His holy enterprise upon the brow of this hapless sinner, forsaken upon a lonely world… yet offered an Eve to stave off the eternal loneliness of existence.

It was… blinding.

“Ha ha!” Naomi crowed in jubilation, pumping her fists wildly through the air. “I knew there was a link! Look, Mike. We got the lights on!”

He grunted out some sort of reply… despite being hunched over… and fouling himself. Again.

Naomi mercilessly whirled to stare at him, distracted from her moment of victory by the spectacle he was making of himself. “Oh, my god. Are you coming?”

There was no point in saying anything. It was self-evident. The only thing he could do now was to curl up in a ball and hope she would lose interest in favor of the lightnings she had somehow summoned.

But then she said something completely unexpected.

“That… is so hot.”

=======

Had a lot of fun piecing this chapter together. Admittedly, it's kind of all over the place, but I think I managed to cram it into some sense of order. Hope you guys enjoyed it.

And I just wanted to thank all of you for being here. Just in case you didn't know it, I really really appreciate you all.